Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Can he even conceive of an economist that deeply respects the thinking and legacy of Keynes, Hayek, Buchanan, and Friedman or does he just dismiss that as a nonsense position?

In the realm of the history of economic thought - which I've been moving out of lately for career-building reasons but would love to do more with at some point - the thing I probably hate most of all is turning the history of thought into a cartoonish battle of the titans. That's really not how intellectual history works, IMO.

9 comments:

It's not like Boettke is targeting anything he writes to people who both 1) Have a deep understanding of economics; and 2) Aren't already sympathetic to his disposition. Why not totally misrepresent those people?

And as for the cartoonish battle of the titans, I think it's because 'dead scholar said XXXX' seems to laymen like the legitimate method of argument in the social sciences. I think they expect us to talk about Keynes and Hayek the same way other social scientists talk about Marx or Foucault.

Daniel wrote: "Can he even conceive of an economist that deeply respects the thinking and legacy of Keynes, Hayek, Buchanan, and Friedman or does he just dismiss that as a nonsense position?"

Nothing he wrote in that piece implies the latter. At all. He's saying that Keynesian thinking, Keynesian language dominates the conversation, and that only challenging the fundamewntal language of economics can bring in a Hayekian revoliution.

Nowhere does he say or imply that Keynes is not a deep thinker, or that there can not be economists who 'respects the thinking and legacy of Keynes, Hayek, Buchanan, and Friedman'. (Hell, Hayek himself was probably one of those economists who did exactly that.)

I have to agree with The Narrator. Daniel Kuehn, you are generous to the Austrians in a way that most would not be, but there are limits to generosity.

"In the realm of the history of economic thought - which I've been moving out of lately for career-building reasons but would love to do more with at some point - the thing I probably hate most of all is turning the history of thought into a cartoonish battle of the titans. That's really not how intellectual history works, IMO."

While turning intellectual history into a battle of the titans is undoubtably a gross over-simplification no matter what, people tend to like the idea of great clashes between two adversaries where one of them has to destroy the other - although in real life, such great clashes between two adversaries ending with one destroying the other seldom happens.

Intellectual history is more nuanced and subtle, of course.

But how long will it be until you reach that "some point", Daniel? Would you be upset if it turned out that you never end up getting around to another paper in the history of economics?

FWIW, Boettke's piece was more strident than I expected it would be. I happen to *agree* with Pete on this stuff, but I can understand why someone who deeply respects Keynes (like Daniel) would be put-off by it.

That may very well be the case, but it doesn't make what Daniel wrote in this post any more justified (because nowhere does Boettke say or imply that Keynes is not a deep thinker, or that there can not be economists who 'respects the thinking and legacy of Keynes, Hayek, Buchanan, and Friedman'. (Hell, Hayek himself was probably one of those economists who did exactly that.))